Ode to Time



Inside you your age
increasing,
inside me my age
gone wandering.
Time is decided,
its bell doesn’t sound,
it augments, strolls,
inside of us,
it appears
like deep water
in a glance
and next to the burning
lashes of your eyes
a blade of grass, the footprint
of a minuscule river,
a tiny dried star
ascending to your mouth.
Time raises
its threads
to your hair,
but in my heart,
like a honeysuckle
is your fragrance,
lively like a fire.
It’s beautiful
as we are living
aging alive.
Every day
was a transparent rock,
every night
for us
a black rose
and this wrinkle in your face or mine
are rock or flower,
memory of lightning.
My eyes have worn out in your beauty.
but you are my eyes.
I grew tired perhaps beneath my kisses
your chest duplicated,
but everyone has seen in my joy
your secret splendor.
Love, that matters
to time,
like itself that raised two flames
or parallel thorns
my body and your sweetness,
tomorrow I will maintain them
or thresh them
and with their same invisible fingers
I will erase that identity that separates us
handing us a victory
of one single being, final, beneath the earth.


Pablo Neruda